Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article investigates the sustained failures of United Nations peacekeeping operations from the perspectives of liberalism and critical international relations theory, with the African Union Mission in Somalia (Somalia) as the main case study. Liberalism emphasizes institutional constraints, coordination issues, and excessive reliance on external support, while critical theory exposes deeper structural issues such as the dynamics of new colonial power, marginalization of local institutions, and global inequality in peacekeeping practices. Analysis suggests that current peace operations often prioritize regional security and donor interests over sustainable peace and inclusive governance. By drawing on local governance experiments in the Kurdish region of Syria, a shift towards a locally led, inclusive, and context sensitive peacekeeping model has been proposed, which emphasizes political legitimacy, cultural diversity, and bottom-up change.
Author: Linxi Li
Institution: Monash University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410327211